• jimbo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What qualifies as a “great ancient structure built by white people”?

    • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Obviously your definition varies but I personally count things like the Roman coliseum, Greek Pantheon, Notre Dame and many other cathedrals, not to mention the many castles across Europe.

      • jimbo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ok, and we have pretty much unbroken historical records about the construction of those. That doesn’t really leave much room for people to invent theories about aliens doing it. Notice that there also aren’t a lot of theories about how great structures in China were built, as we have well preserved history for those, too. On the other hand, we do have people theorizing that Stonehedge was built by aliens, despite being an “ancient structure built by white people”. We don’t have any historical records for that structure.

        That all said, I’m not really buying that theories about aliens building things are racist. It seems to have much more to do with which structures we still have the history for and which ones we do not.

        • mriormro@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It mostly stems from racist or colonial sentiments. It’s a little bit dishonest to insinuate that really it’s unbroken historical records that assuage ancient alien theory and not the racist notion that “savage races couldn’t have possibly built this”.

    • N0N0@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      European Cathedrals (like the dome of cologne or the Hagia Sophia in istanbul), the Roman limes (great wall structures, plural), Roman aqueducts and the Colloseum, some later pyramides were designed by hellenistic architects (successors of Alexander the Great and his fellowers), further in the past come Stonehenge and other megalite structures, and many more - sadly lost - antique wonders of the world.